Señorita Ruth

New Mexico Wine Festival 2009 – Sunday, September 6, 2009

A Rag­ing Suc­cess cur­ing Social Amne­sia

OMG! There’s wine here!

Com­ing where I come from, it’s not out­side the rea­son­able to pre­pare for just about any­thing when you decide to go to a large gath­er­ing of any sort. Years of state fairs, char­ity events, mas­sive out­door con­certs and other assorted social con­ver­gences have taught me to be ready for any­thing, bring every­thing, and get ready to wait on your way out of the park­ing lot.

I fully expected (and endorse) any of the typ­i­cal symp­toms of a desert get-together at the New Mex­ico Wine Fes­ti­val. I car­ried a light sweater. I had worn no pants (a skirt is much friend­lier to the vagrant breeze that cools off a hot sum­mer day), I wore a ban­dana, sun­glasses, san­dals. I had my phone, extra lip balm and a cam­era. I didn’t drive, so my plan for the extended crawl out of park­ing lots and streets was to snooze in the pas­sen­ger seat, pleas­antly wine-oed while we inched our way back to Albuquerque.

In full dis­clo­sure, it’s been years since I’ve spent any qual­ity time in Bernalillo. I zoom past it on my way north and careen close to it on my way to Santa Ana (with their glow-in-the-dark bowl­ing!). I spent a night in a motel there once, played with child­hood friends while par­ents vis­ited long before that. I’m just not that close to Bernalillo, even though it’s rather close to me. After the fes­ti­val, the plan was to have din­ner at the orig­i­nal The Range loca­tion, until we found out from a friend that it had burned down. Obvi­ously a lot of his­tory there that I’m not hip to.

After a late-morning Fly­ing Star break­fast, we shot up the free­way and were in town before we knew it. Being used to head­ing to Santa Fe, get­ting off the free­way so quickly made it seem like we were there in no time. The direc­tions to get to the grounds were so sim­ple, we didn’t even print out the Google Map. (*gasp* rebels!). Find­ing it was easy with the appro­pri­ate sig­nage lead­ing the way. We found park­ing in a fan­tas­tic field for the rea­son­able price of $5. In Albu­querque, sim­i­lar park­ing so close to the event would be impos­si­ble, or priced at twice the going rate in Bernalillo. We walked across the street to a still-growing line when we got there at 1:35. It looked intim­i­dat­ing, but I’ve licked longer lines wait­ing for amuse­ment park rides. We got to the back of the line and started mov­ing for­ward soon after. A police offi­cer on a Seg­way with all-terrain tires (this is still New Mex­ico, after all) rolled up and down the line, sug­gest­ing that those that could buy tick­ets online via Town of Bernalillo should, and to keep their pay­ment con­fir­ma­tion win­dow open.

I made some snarky com­ment about tech­nol­ogy and small towns; some­thing along the lines of “*snark* I won­der if a web­site called town of Bernalillo can han­dle such a thing.*snark*”.

Turns out it can. We didn’t get our tick­ets over the Black­berry (I made a tac­ti­cal mis­take in choos­ing the email the con­fir­ma­tion should go to), but sev­eral peo­ple around us pur­chased their tick­ets over the course of the line mov­ing for­ward, and were able to get in via the much-shorter VIP line. By the time I was fin­ished mess­ing around with mobile web, how­ever, we were already at the front of the line. 

This is where I was expect­ing the rougher edges of adult, ID-requiring social get-togethers to expose them­selves. Pre­dictably, there was a woman in front of us who was try­ing to pro­vide some form of ID that included valu­able papers and ziplock bag­gies. As soon as the atten­dant saw that she was hav­ing a hard time believ­ing that what­ever doc­u­ment she was hold­ing wasn’t going to work, he guided her toward a nearby police offi­cer. A quick con­fer­ence of fam­ily mem­bers to arrange for a meet­ing place occurred, and then she went to con­sult with said police­man, leav­ing the rest of us who actu­ally drink reg­u­larly move ahead with our appro­pri­ate driver’s license out and ready to be checked. So, get­ting in was a snap.

We began our after­noon at Dos Viejos, where I had a delight­ful glass of ice-cold Sym­phony. It was sweet, and it was enjoy­able as we began our walk-around in the hot after­noon sun. We were a group of four that met there, thus dif­fer­ent peo­ple were at dif­fer­ent lev­els of wine-dom. My sis­ter needed food, so we wan­dered over to the food court. While it was hot, the grass and mature trees pro­vided plenty of seat­ing and shade.There were sets of lawn fur­ni­ture with shade umbrel­las, and two huge jumps for the kids. The food offer­ings var­ied from plates of bread, cheese and grapes (what I would have cho­sen if I hadn’t already stuffed my face with deli­cious bacon), to the tra­di­tional turkey legs, Indian Tacos and hot dogs. My sis­ter the bot­tom­less pit went from an Indian Taco to a hot dog over the course of the afternoon.

After the first food inter­lude, we tasted Guadalupe Vineyard’s out­stand­ing Ries­ling though we shied away from the $8/glass price, and instead opted to wait in line at one of the tents under a mas­sive tree.

**Pro­Tip: try to get your loca­tion in the shade! You’ll be sure to attract folks all after­noon long!**

The wine caddy folks had the right idea. They had a sweet spot under the biggest tree there.

Going to the Math­e­son tent was the luck­i­est find of all. I loved all the offer­ings we tried, finally stick­ing with the Tres for my glass. The caber­net was also quite deli­cious. I’m sur­prised I’m remem­ber­ing this level of detail at all, con­sid­er­ing how excel­lently buzzed I am at this point.

I and nearly every­one else, I might add. The rules, how­ever, seemed to be enforced and obeyed in such a way that every­one seemed to be hav­ing a good time. I didn’t see a sin­gle fight/push/shove/unkind word or ges­ture, which was nice. We tra­versed back to the food court for the afore­men­tioned hot dog as it was con­sumed by my sis­ter. The last stop of the after­noon was at Pon­derosa Val­ley Win­ery, where the Jemez Red was my choice in the end. I remem­ber lik­ing their other selec­tions as well.

I can’t blame the line. We totally took our time at the counter too.

We hung around after 5, even though the tast­ing was done. 

So was my sister.

The crowd slowly dwin­dled in size, but there were peo­ple walk­ing around, shop­ping the wine tents and the arts and crafts tents until after we left. We stopped by the Pis­ta­chio Tree Ranch/McGinn’s Coun­try Store/Arena Win­ery for some shelled pis­ta­chios. We walked away with shelled pecans, Green Chile fla­vor. We wan­dered eas­ily over to Math­e­son, all the while stop­ping at jew­elry & pot­tery tents (one day I’ll go loaded with cash to one of these things and just buy up every pretty lit­tle thing that I can). When we arrived to Math­e­son, we inquired about buy­ing a bot­tle of the caber­net. They were cleaned out! They had nary a thing for sale, it appeared, and wouldn’t until the next day. Of course, the tast­ing room is open through­out the week to dou­ble check your notes and pick up that elu­sive bottle.

No wine for you! Come see us in Rio Ran­cho! So we were told.

The walk from the fes­ti­val grounds, which were just the right size to be both com­fort­able and big enough to allow one to get around, even through the wine lines, rea­son­ably eas­ily, back to the field where we parked the car was short, and traffic-friendly, even though we had to cross the main thor­ough­fare by which peo­ple were dis­pers­ing. Turn­ing left was no prob­lem, and find­ing park­ing for The Range down the street was a cinch. Although it was pre­dictably busy, we had great food and good ser­vice. Feel­ing a bit more grounded and def­i­nitely a lot less “tasted,” we got on the free­way and zoomed home. The ride was quick and unevent­ful, and we were home as if we’d been just down the block.

I was pleas­antly sur­prised to not have needed my light jacket (yay weather!) or my cell phone emer­gency con­tacts (as a result of being stranded or a huge fight break­ing out). The police offi­cers and event orga­niz­ers worked well together to enforce the rules (I did not spot one sin­gle open bot­tle of wine– and I was look­ing!), and the crowd was respect­ful toward each other and to the grounds. I look for­ward to next year’s fes­ti­val, pro­vided it remains at such a nice loca­tion (or some­thing sim­i­lar) and that its suc­cess con­tin­ues to hinge on a great get-together for the whole family.

Good night, Bernalillo! Thanks for all the fun!